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<title>The Dancing Stones by Zdenka</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28242180">The Dancing Stones</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/pseuds/Zdenka'>Zdenka</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Ancient British Stones (Anthropomorphic Stones)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Don't Have to Know Canon, Folklore, Gen, Transformation into Stone, background F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 17:47:46</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,363</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28242180</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/pseuds/Zdenka</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It is said that the stones still dance under the moonlight. But what does a stone think of, over the centuries?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Dancing Stones</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/illudio/gifts">illudio</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The Merry Maidens of Boleigh are a stone circle said to be maidens who were turned into stone for dancing on the Sabbath. Two stones a short distance away, the Pipers, are supposed to be the musicians who played for the maidens. The Pipers realized it was about to strike midnight and fled, leaving the maidens to their fate--but they were turned into stone as well.</p><p>Thanks to mousek and roguefaerie for beta-reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The moon rises in the sky, filling the grassy field with its silvery light. The light falls upon a group of crooked standing stones, nineteen of them, in a circle—and as the moonlight touches them, they awake.</p><p><em>Again</em>, thinks the first stone. <em>Awake again</em>—and she slowly turns her heavy body back and forth. At last she grows more limber, turning herself in a full circle. Her shadow turns with her in the moonlight, awkward and ungainly. She thinks with regret of the time when she had supple limbs and light feet, a face that made men’s heads turn, beautiful hair that she combed every morning until it gleamed. She had braided ribbons into it that morning, giggling to imagine how they would dance in the breeze. Now there is only her stone self, and she does not like to look at her humped shadow. She does not look at her companions either, the stones to her left and right. Now they are all moving together, rotating as they go, dancing their eternal path around the circle. They dance all together, will-they nill-they, and the first stone moves resignedly through her steps, waiting for the bells of the church to toll midnight and send them all back to their stony sleep.</p><p>The second, third, and fourth stones are three sisters; they came together to the dance, and now they stand beside each other in the circle. They whisper and laugh together, trading gossip. People will say so much when they don’t know that you’re listening! They are alert to all the local news: who has bought a house and moved in, who has moved away, who has died or married or given birth. And of course they are alert to any hint of scandal. To their delight, even news from distant parts reaches them. They could only have dreamed of going to Paris when they were living girls. But now one can say to the others: “I heard today that the President of France . . .”</p><p>“What!!”</p><p>“No, really?”</p><p>“Yes, for sure! A young man who visited today took one of those little things out of his pocket, like a very small black book, and he read it aloud to his sweetheart.”</p><p>“Tell me more!”</p><p>She does, and then they giggle all together.</p><p>“Cowards!” the seventh stone calls, her voice unheard by human ears. “God-damned cowards!” She is shouting at the Pipers; it gives her satisfaction to see them try to flinch away. But they are bound in their place; unlike the dancing maidens, they cannot move even an inch. The smaller Piper plays faster, desperately adding elaborate trills and musical ornaments to his tune as if to appease her. The larger Piper matches his speed, steadily playing his tune as he has for centuries. She scoffs at both of them. The miserable wretches tried to run away and save their own skins, leaving the dancing maidens to their fate. They were stuck here anyway, and it serves them right! She calls them every name she can think of, not heeding how the tenth stone shudders and recites her prayers more fervently, or how the three sisters whisper together, pretending to be shocked.</p><p>She only wishes she could make her voice heard by living men too. The morning after their transformation, the priest came out of the church and solemnly preached over them, warning others of their terrible example. She hated his pompous air, so smug and self-righteous, so sure that he had never sinned. The prating idiot! There’s no harm in dancing and there never was. If she could, she would have told him a thing or two. That priest is long gone, buried in the churchyard and turned to dust. But men sometimes come here even now to gawk at them in the daylight, when the stones can’t move. They had better not come here while the circle is dancing; she would gladly crush them to death! They wouldn’t be so smug then.</p><p>The tenth stone bows her granite head as she glides and turns, avoiding the frivolity of her companions. She has long since repented her sin. Surely merciful God will not allow her to bear this curse forever? She prays with all her heart, uttering prayers to the Father in Heaven; she cannot weep, but when the frost melts on her surface and trickles down, it feels like her tears. This dance is her punishment, but she hopes someday to be forgiven.</p><p>The thirteenth stone is silent, turning through figures of the dance without a word. She feels tiny specks of dust shaken from her with every movement. The wind and the rain wear her down, little by little; the lichens leave tiny pits on her rough surface. She has seen the trees around her sprout into saplings, grow tall, then wither and die. The grass and small plants do the same, more quickly. A dragonfly buzzes by her on a summer day in the warmth of the sun, and the next day it is dead and dry. She herself, the stone, is an inch shorter than she was at first. She does not count the days or the years, but little by little everything on earth wears down. She waits for the day when she herself is only dust scattered on the wind, and her whirling thoughts may have rest.</p><p>The sixteenth and seventeenth stones have a secret, and dancing on the Sabbath is not what the priest would call their greatest sin. When they were clad in living flesh, when the blood still flowed in their veins, they often stood side by side as they do now. When no one was looking, they let their hands brush together, feeling a thrill like lightning. And more: they crept away alone together and held each other close, feeling each other’s soft breathing, warm breast against warm breast. They traded kisses again and again, each touch of lips as sweet as honey, all the sweeter for being forbidden. Their love still burns in them, keeps them warm after so many years. When they pass in the dance, they whisper to each other softly: “I regret nothing—” “—so long as I am with you.” Strangers often come here to look at them; sometimes they are lovers hand in hand. When the lovers are two women, when they bend close together to steal a kiss in the shadow of the stones, the two stones smile inside and remember.</p><p>The nineteenth stone, the smallest and youngest, watches the heavens as she dances. She tastes the faint tang of frost in the air and sees the stars above her slowly move in a dance even grander and slower than hers. Sometimes an owl comes softly winging past, and she thinks of a tale she heard long ago, that the owl was once a woman made of flowers, turned into a bird and cursed to flee the fear behind her. Strange, she thinks, that one would be cursed to flight and another to perpetual stillness. But when an owl’s feather comes drifting down, fallen from its wing, she catches it on her stony head and amuses herself by keeping it balanced there through her rotations. It is an ornament to her dress of grey stone and lichens. And the owl will fly onward, perhaps looking down from so far above that the nineteenth stone and her companions look small as children’s toys. She looks up at the stars and dreams of it, of being changed into an owl, clad in light feathers instead of heavy stone. If there can be one change, why not another?</p><p>The first deep sound of the bells rings out through the night air from the old church of St. Buryan. Between the first note and the second, the Pipers’ music cuts off mid-note. The stones’ dance slows, and they move back toward their accustomed places. There is a final babble of speech heard by no mortal ear: “Half-wit fools!”—“always love you—”—“mercy on my soul—” “—at last—” And by the time the twelfth note rings out, there is only a circle of rough stones, silent and motionless in the moonlight.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p><em>the owl was once a woman made of flowers</em>: a reference to the story of Blodeuedd from the <em>Mabinogion</em></p></blockquote></div></div>
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